The Before 2020 List

A few years back, when the weather wasn’t conducive for playing kubb outside, I started a mindful meditation practice. It quickly provided me much the same mind calming benefit indoors as kubb does outdoors.

After steadily building a daily practice for about a year, my schedule shifted, my priorities shifted. Today my practice is much less frequent.

In fact, my practice is currently a bi-weekly guided meditation class at my neighborhood gym. Though I can (and have) successfully maintained my practice solo – having an appointment involving other people at a specific time suddenly makes it An Important Meeting.

There’s the added benefit of a yogi focused on keeping it fresh through a new technique or suggestion. I always leave refreshed, more centered, and more proactive.

It’s easy to allow each day to bleed into the next. Easy to commute into work on Monday and commute home on Friday without knowing quite sure what happened in-between. You probably replied to some emails and sat in some meetings.

But what did you accomplish?

It’s not that you or anyone else is disappointed in your work. You’re actually moving things forward quite nicely.

It’s just…

It’s just that it you feel like you’re only reacting, just putting out fires, never moving the big, important work forward. Never quite being able to work on the most exciting projects, or solving the most irritating problems. Always feeling behind – not to mention running late. Or, not quite sure where to best apply your energy.

In working with the most ambitious, creative, and driven professionals, I’ve found they continually struggle with two things;
– blocking off time for planning their work (and keeping that commitment to themselves) and

– ensuring all their most important commitments have an appropriate place on their calendar within the next two weeks.

If there was one key technique, one key habit providing the benefits of the How To Use a Calendar program in concentrated form it would be The Guided Bi-Weekly Preview.

Clients have asked me what they need to get the most out of The Guided Bi-Weekly Preview. Perhaps counter-intuitively, you need two things:

– Some sense of all your current commitments, their milestones and deadlines.

– At least one trusted list. This list isn’t a ‘To Do’ list or even a ‘Someday Maybe’ list- it’s far too exciting, far too inspiring to include ‘vacuum stairs’. It’s an ‘Won’t It Be Amazing When I’ list. This list is for all the things ‘You’re too busy’ for, all those things the resistance is keeping you from.

A ‘Bucket List’?

Um, sure, if you must be pessimistic about it. I prefer “Before 2020” for that begins to answer When?. The 3-5 year time frame is long enough to dream outside of your daily banality, yet short enough to be see the end. Whether or not it’s a Bucket List really depends on where you’re at in 2020 🙂

I don’t care if it’s currently empty. I care that it’s where you go when you’ve have an idea for something fitting that description. I care that during your Weekly Preview you ask, “What’s one small step I can take next week?”

Want to unlock your productivity and gain more free time? Want to banish To Do Lists forever & be confident not missing anything? Want to achieve your most important goals while maintaining inbox zero? Want to know the one question that unlocks all of this?
In the ‘The Power of When’ audio program Garrick van Buren & Patrick Rhone will provide you with a simple set of tools to dramatically improve your productivity, eliminate your procrastination, and achieve your most important goals. $97